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A ridiculous 50% of the total federal budget is Social Secrity and Medicare. They are going to have to be reformed in order to be saved by doing some combination of (1.) raising the age leligibility as people live longer, (2.) means test benefits and/or (3.) raise or totally eliminate the $100,000 cap on taxes. Trump has said that he isn't going to touch entitlements and to be fair, neither have the Democrats, but that's half of the budget that's off the table.
He's promised a big increase in military spending, which was at about 16% of the budget, so now we're at 66% of the budget without factoring in the military spending increase.
Interest on the debt is another 7%, so that brings us to about 73% of the budget being consumed by sacred cows before we cut anything.
All other federal programs are included in the remaining 27%. You could eliminate whole Departments and not make that much of an impact in total numbers.
Now factor in a promised huge infrastructure investment, along with the Defense buildup, coupled with a big tax cut.
How do we pay for all that without massively increasing the national debt? For those of you who fall back on the Reagan example, yes he did massively cut taxes and increase spending, and yes he did increase economic activity, but he did so at the cost of trebling the national debt.
Is the economy bad enough now to blow the deficit further and pass on more debt to our children?
Last edited by Bureaucat; 02-27-2017 at 07:59 AM..
Take the cap off of the wages subject to SS taxation.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that the maximum amount of wages in 2017 subject to the 6.2% Social Security tax (old age, survivor, and disability insurance) will rise from $118,500 to $127,200, an increase of more than 7%. By comparison, the 2016 wage base was unchanged from 2015. - See more at: Social Security Administration announces large increase in 2017 wage base
Cut military spending!
Isn't it like 42% of the budget and now Trump wants
to raise it even more while also closing bases around the world, what
is he going to spend it on?
Melania should move to the White House. That would save the tax payers 100 million or so?
Cut Trump's vacation budget to a maximum of $12 million per year. He has already spent $10 million so far.
Lumping SS and Medicare together makes little sense, fiscally speaking.
We can cut Medicare without touching SS.
#1 is negotiating drug prices for Medicare. However Trump is too big of a wimp to take that one on, and the Congress is too corrupt.
MDs are paid 6% of medications administered in their offices/ clinics. This becomes apparent in Cancer Treatment.
Medicare reimburses hospitals at cost, including overhead. Overhead includes all sorts of things not medically necessary, valet parking, private rooms/ baths, room service, orders from local restaurants, premium cable, WIFI enabled, therapy dogs, non medical management making 7 figures, Starbucks, advertising and on and on.
Despite all these swell things that increase the competitiveness of a hospital in their local market, it adds a huge amount to the bottom line.
You don't typically find these amenities in foreign healthcare systems ranked substantially better in terms of access and outcomes than the US healthcare system.
Most US hospitals are not for profit. This status does not preclude profit and many make $ hundreds of millions in annual profits. They simply cannot use those profits to declare a dividend. They can however use those profits to build their brand and destroy or acquire the competition.
The American Hospital Association is a powerful lobby.
During the Bush years, Congress twice denied Medicare the ability to negotiate or regulate the cost of prescription medications or buy from countries that do. Congress put the best interests of Big Pharma before those of the people and did so on the cusp of creating Medicare Part D, prescription drug coverage.
The US is in the midst of an opiate/opioid epidemic and Big Pharma has been as much a beneficiary as El Chappo.
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